The Navy is confident it will be able to move quickly to acquire the next generation sea-based land- attack cruise missile to replace the Tomahawks, Secretary Ray Mabus told lawmakers March 27.
The Navy has about 4,000 Tomahawks in its inventory, an amount that would be enough for any contingency that should arise in the near future, and until the service is able deploy the new missile, Mabus said.
“The supply of Tomahawks that we have…is sufficient to carry us through any eventuality that we can foresee,” Mabus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Navy’s fiscal 2015 budget request and accompanying five-year acquisition plan calls for the service to purchase an additional 100 of the Raytheon [RTN]-built Tomahawks next year, which would mark the final run production for a missile that has been a cornerstone in the U.S. weapons arsenal in conflicts over the last two decades.
More than 200 of the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, which cost $1.2 million-$1.5 million apiece, were launched during the 2011 conflict in Libya.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose home state produces the Tomahawks, said during the hearing the Navy was “rolling the dice” in assuming it could have the new missile in place before the Tomahawk inventory was depleted. Mabus, however, said the Navy has begun a study to shape the next generation missile and believes the process would go quick enough to avoid any gaps in the capability.
“We believe we can get that follow-on weapon into the fleet expeditiously,” Mabus said. “We certainly don’t want a gap between the Tomahawk and the next weapon.”
Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley told the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower panel the service could revisit plans to cease Tomahawk production after fiscal 2015 and add the missiles to the budget for the following year if it needed to.
Tomahawks are guided weapons for precision strike and are launched from Navy destroyers, cruisers and submarines.